Ahoy, y’all. I’m sitting at the nav station aboard Raven enjoying a couple of days of R & R at anchor in Pipeline Canal, a small anchorage just to the west of Southport, NC, off the Inter Coastal Waterway (ICW). For those of you who don’t know, David and I have failed miserably to adapt to land life and have once again set off on Raven, this time heading south. We are aiming for St. Augustine, FL for Christmas, and after that will take a big breath and plunge eastward to the Bahamas. It’s not a new voyage for Raven, who spent three years in the Bahamas and Caribbean with her previous owner, but it’s a new trip for us. David bare boated in the BVIs in the 80s; I’ve never been to that part of the world at all.
One lure is the warmth – neither of us was looking forward to another winter on Raven in northern climes. When the weather is mild, you can sit out in the cockpit or on the cabin roof, you can read or do chores or wander around town if you feel like it. But when the wind pipes up and frosts your nose, you tend to become a badger, burrowing down in the cabin for warmth. Cozy as a badger hole is, it’s also dark, small, and claustrophobic after a few days.
When you’re underway, the cabin is just cozy and a welcome shelter after several hours at the wheel. Unlike some boaters, we have no enclosure for the cockpit, so when it’s cold, our noses turn bright red, our eyes water, and we drink gallons of hot tea. We also wear layers and layers and layers, and look a little bit like Robbie, Ralph’s younger brother in A Christmas Story, who looked like the Michelin man in his snow suit and couldn’t get up if he fell down. I routinely wear 5 layers on my torso, 4 layers on my legs, and a couple of hats, rubber boots, etc. If I ever took my hats off, I’d probably be appalled by “hat head” but they only come off when I wash my hair!
David bought a little propane heater before we left New Bern, and it keeps the cabin tolerable at night. We turn it off when we go to bed and the temperature drops rapidly. Schnitzel is curled up on the settee in her dog bed, wearing a sweater and covered in her blanket and often my jacket. David and I crawl into the v-berth on top of memory foam (ahhhh) and under a light blanket and our trusty sleeping bag, opened to make a full sized cover. We take with us a hot water bottle that toasts our feet. It gradually makes its way north to my stomach and keeps us warm all night. Our breaths frost the air in the morning, and David bravely makes a run for the propane heater to take the ice out of the air in the morning. We’re the comic sight, holding our clothes over the heater to warm them up as we wrap up for the coming day. As I said, warmth is a real draw!
This is the 6th day since we left New Bern on November 30th. We’ve wandered down the ICW the entire way, traveling through some beautiful marshland, large rivers, and narrow, shallow channels lined with houses. Those last are a bit like sailing down a city street and certainly aren’t my favorite byways. I was actually grateful for the military at Camp LeJeune because the land there is left wild and undeveloped, a peaceful and beautiful passage of marshland, scrubby shrubs and tall pines, lined by sandy banks and punctuated with big grey herons who hunch on the sand and look into the water, considering the possibility of breakfast. Of course occasionally the military is shooting the place up on maneuvers but they are kind enough to post that kind of activity and fortunately they were standing down as we passed.
We pulled in here to get out of the 25-30 knot winds (although we did get in some great sailing coming down the Cape Fear River) and the choppy waters. We’re trying to take it easy as we wander southward, and to rest a couple of days a week at a conducive anchorage. Tomorrow we up anchor and head for South Carolina, which I hope is at least 5 degrees warmer. It was actually quite nice this morning, and I sat out on deck for about an hour, putting another coat of teak oil on the port toe rail. We enjoyed a dinghy into land and a longish walk, with Schnitzel even getting to run off leash. But then the temperature took a dive, so I came in and made a casserole to heat up the boat and my guess is we’ll pass the afternoon reading, knitting, chart-plotting, and washing up (always washing up).
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